Once upon a time, there were advertising agencies that offered clients a full range of services, including media and creative. The two were considered, developed, recommended, and delivered together.
Then, in the last millennium, media was split off, and media and creative were often handled by separate and sometimes competing companies: various teams, both in-house and outsourced, developed channel strategies, creative strategies, and connection strategies.
But increasingly, these are being put back together with what is again called “full service.” Still, it is more likely an integrated offering similar to the one Publicis Groupe developed for their client Arnott’s with The Neighbour, which we discussed previously.
But in this episode, we are going under the hood of the integrated offering to discuss how an integrated agency offering works with Publicis Groupe ANZ‘s Chief Media Officer, Imogen Hewitt, Chief Creative Officer, Dave Bowman, and Chief Data Officer, Maurice Riley.
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“Oh, I didn’t realise that we were going with a 90-second cinema ad because I’ve only got six-second bumpers on the plan.”
Transcription:
Darren:
Hi, I’m Darren Woolley, founder and CEO of TrinityP3 Marketing Management consultancy and welcome to Managing Marketing – a weekly podcast where we discuss the issues and opportunities facing marketing, media, and advertising with industry thought leaders and practitioners.
If you’re enjoying the Managing Marketing Podcast, please either like, review or share this episode to help spread the words and wisdom from our guests each week.
Now, once upon a time, there were advertising agencies that offered a client a full range of services, being largely media and creative, where the two were considered, developed, recommended and delivered together.
Then the last millennium, media split off, and media and creative were often handled by separate and sometimes competing companies with channel strategies, creative strategies, connection strategies and more being developed by various teams, both in-house and outsourced.
But, increasingly, these are being put back together with what is again called full service, but is more likely to be an integrated offering, similar to the one Publicis Groupe developed for their client Arnott’s with The Neighbourhood, which we’ve discussed here previously.
Today, we’re going under the hood of the integrated offering to discuss how an integrated agency offering actually works. To do that, I have the three practice leads from Publicis Groupe Australia to show me the way.
Please welcome to the Managing Marketing Podcast, Publicis Groupe ANZ Chief Media Officer, Imogen Hewitt. Hi, Imo.
Imogen:
Hi, how are you?
Darren:
Good to have you back.
Imogen:
Thank you.
Darren:
The Chief Creative Officer, Dave Bowman. Welcome, Dave.
Dave:
Thank you for having me.
Darren:
You’re a first timer.
Dave:
I know.
Darren:
And the Chief Data Officer, Maurice Riley. Welcome, Maurice.
Maurice:
Thank you. Hello.
Darren:
The only other Maurice I know from Publicis Groupe is Maurice Levy, but I believe he won’t be here today.
Maurice:
He won’t. But I often get his emails by mistake. So, if you have a question, I can get it to him.
Darren:
Please tell him I’m still apologising for being late for that meeting in 2007 in New York. Anyway, this is a really interesting trend, because when media was split off, they said you could never put the toothpaste back into the tube. But I don’t think we’re actually seeing the toothpaste going back into the tube.
I’ll start with you, Imogen, because it was always considered that media was the toothpaste, wasn’t it?
Imogen:
It was. And I was around at the stage when that toothpaste was first coming out of the tube, around sort of the late 1990s, working in full-service agencies and watching that whole piece of industry history kind of unravel.
Are we putting it back in? Probably not. Is toothpaste sometimes glue around here? Yeah, occasionally. It’s a different way of bringing the pieces back together, but we’re not going back in time. Because there are lessons that we’ve learned that would mean that, that wouldn’t necessarily be progress.
Darren:
And a lot has changed. I mean, just in the media space alone. When that first separation happened, the internet was still embryonic. We didn’t have social media; search engines were just around the corner. Media has actually changed phenomenally in the last 20 years to the point that it is a discipline in its own right.
Imogen:
Beyond any doubt whatsoever. So, if we think about the relative ease with which you could get in front of the bulk of the population through a couple of key positions on popular television programs, for instance.
You were talking sort of 60% of the population on a Sunday night, and the ability to do that has been gone for a very long time in that sort of singular execution type way. It’s a much more complicated beast.
There is not just broadcast proliferation to manage, but also personalisation proliferation to manage, technology to manage. It is definitely a discipline in its own right. But, and I guess we’re going to get into it, one that is absolutely capable of enhancing other disciplines and vice versa.
Darren:
And we’ll get to that. But the other thing that changed is back then you had a very limited number of data sources. There were largely the subscription models, like Nielsen and Roy Morgan, or there was data from the media owners, which always came heavily suspect about how they’d skew that. But there wasn’t a lot of data available to media compared to today, was there?
Imogen:
No, not really. It was different types of data…
There was a lot of research that was done in order to fill in some of those gaps. There was a lot of delving into publisher data to work out how much was a little shinier than it should have been, and how much was true to the fact.
The discipline of using evidence existed, but the amount of evidence that we had to use was constricted as compared to today.
Darren:
And really, Maurice, that’s where your role has transformed. Because, back then, I guess you would’ve been called perhaps a strategist? But today it’s more about data analytics and insights, isn’t it?
Maurice:
Well, I’m still a strategist.
Darren:
Well, that’s not what they said. It says Chief Data Officer.
Maurice:
But it’s not data for data’s sake. It’s data to give information. And back then…
Darren:
That’s not your title. Seriously, we need to say what it is.
Imogen:
‘Chief Data for Insight Officer’.
Maurice:
Yes, the ‘Chief Data and Insights Officer’. It’s not about having all the data sources in the world. It’s about having the right data sources for the challenge. The sources that are going to give the information we need to support our creative ambition and our media ambition. To give our clients the confidence that they’re making the right decisions, to go out there and try to connect with consumers.
Darren:
That’s an interesting approach and one that I’ve heard said a lot, because you can drown in all of the sources of data. But a lot of data scientists would argue against that, and they’d say, “Give me as much as you can get your hands on. Because something will come from it.”
Maurice:
Look, we talk about the differences when we’re looking for insight as spearfishing and shrimping. When you shrimp, you go down deep, and you try to grab as much as you can. You come up with the shrimp, and sometimes you have shrimp in there, sometimes you have rocks, sometimes you have some other creature of the sea.
But you can also spearfish. So, when we work with our media and creative strategists, and they have hypothesis and an instinct, how can I go out and find the data that helps prove that, or validate that or size it? That’s spearfishing.
Darren:
Different task. Different objective.
Maurice:
Exactly. I’ll also challenge that in the data privacy landscape today, just grabbing every piece of data that you can is not smart and not ethical.
Darren:
And what do they do? They pour it into what used to be a dam and then it was a lake, and now it’s an ocean of data. It’s like, “How can we scale this any bigger?”
Dave, all of these changes have had a huge impact from a creative perspective. I guess one of them is the fact that there was a time that people thought of creative as making the TV ads.
Dave:
Yes. And there’s still a little bit of that in certain parts of our world and it’s still a super exciting part of the landscape. But, things are far more complex now. I think that’s exciting, by the way. I feel like the creative landscape that existed 20 plus years ago had a beautiful simplicity about it, but also a naivety about it.
There was a lot of gut feel, I think, in the creative agency landscape as it was 20 plus years ago. The data came afterwards in the form of sales numbers, and it was kind of, “Oh, it worked, or it didn’t. We’re in trouble or we’re celebrating.”
I feel like two decades on, to be able to be armed as a creative person with so much more insight to map out where you’re going to go creatively actually helps a huge amount. Now, it can be quite restrictive sometimes – to your point about the dam, and then the lake, and then the ocean, it can be overwhelming.
So, I think part of the magic in that world is having a partner or partners to help you navigate that creatively and get down to something that is not just sensical, but still gives you that lateral leap, “We know this, and that’s why we’re going to jump off here and do something more interesting with that.”
But certainly, in terms of practitioners coming up in the industry now, it’s a wildly different landscape to navigate and try and learn. And it changes at a pace and frequency that I think only a particular sort of new entrant is ready for – one that is excited about that flux rather than terrified by it.
Darren:
And so much more diversity in opportunity as well. Because I imagine there’s still clients out there that come in and say, “Well, we want X,” and they’ve already predefined the channel that they think the solution needs. But there would also be a growing number that are saying, “Here’s the problem, you guys sort it out.”
Dave:
I think that’s where we get most excited as a trio, to be honest. When we have an aim not necessarily at a channel, or a format, or a particular end product, but an aim, or an intention, or an opportunity with a client. When they’re like, “Please help us navigate the way to get to that.”
Then working together to format what that might actually look like as an output, as a strategy, as a deployment mechanism, or whatever that is. I think the most exciting challenge right now is that, that is literally different every day. Because no two opportunities even vaguely resemble each other, from where I’m sitting.
Darren:
And also, collectively, there’s another level of complexity that the three of you are dealing with. That is, we’re not talking about a single agency. I mean, Publicis Groupe is not an agency. It’s actually a company that holds in Australia 18 different businesses, brands in some cases. Brands in their own right, and you’re coordinating that as well.
Because sometimes a client will come for a Publicis Groupe solution, but other times they may be Saatchi & Saatchi with a Spark Foundry media offering, and some of the other marketing services that you bring to the table. For you guys, do you find that an extra level of challenge, Imogen?
Imogen:
I think it’s really exciting. There are instances where clients are coming to us and saying, “We think that we want to explore an end-to-end solution.” That is happening more and more often, which is proof in the pudding to the kind of transformation that we started a good six, seven years ago in terms of bringing these things together.
Darren:
And people have always liked having one throat to choke. Let’s be honest.
Imogen:
Well, there is a little bit of that, but I think they also see…
Darren:
One place to go and say, “You are now responsible”.
Imogen:
That accountability, I think is incredibly important. And it prevents there being misses and drops along the way when it is an end-to-end solution within one holdco. We have the amazing ability to be able to draw from not just the brands within those 18 businesses that you referenced, but also the individuals within each of those brands who have distinct sensibilities or capabilities, or have a particular passion for something.
So, we have this ability to navigate, “Is there a good brand plus brand solution to this problem? Or are there specific individuals across the breadth of the agencies, Australia and New Zealand, that we can draw on and pull together to answer a problem, and do that in a way which is distinct, unique and really interesting?”
It’s slightly unwieldy, sure. But the opportunity for delivering really amazing work out of that can get you through any of the slightly muddy steps from A to B or Z.
Darren:
I want to apologise for jumping in, except that we are noticing that a large number of clients that have built what they call ‘villages’ have found that the onus in time and responsibility of managing those villages has become so great. That’s why they’re looking for the one throat.
That somehow, it’ll alleviate the demands on an already stretched marketing team if the agency or the group that they appoint can take on some of that stress.
Imogen:
I don’t disagree with you at all. I think you’ve got marketing teams that are under the same sorts of pressures as the industry as a whole. Everybody is looking for more efficient ways of doing things pretty much all the time.
It’s an observation that bears true. That if you have really good process that means there are the right people in the right meetings, making the right decisions on the right pieces of work at the right juncture. You actually do it more quickly, more efficiently.
You need less clients in less meetings. There are clearly evidenced ways that this is delivering that kind of efficiency, as well as having a really material impact on the kind of work that you get out. Because you’ve got the right combination of skillsets looking for interesting ways of delivering a solution together.
So, it does both. I think it delivers better work and it can also deliver some of the time back that clients are always looking for. I think this sort of model means that clients do less mediating and more managing. But I guess it depends on the definition of the word, doesn’t it?
Dave:
But if you could choose between dealing with politics as part of your day or just dealing with opportunity, I reckon that’s a really easy choice for time poor marketers.
Imogen:
Without any doubt whatsoever.
Darren:
I think that’s what we are seeing, just the amount of time sees some marketers default and go, “You sort it out.” But when you’ve got 5, 6, 8 different companies all with their own P&L, wanting their share (or their unfair share) of a budget, that’s not something they can ever sort out. That’s the problem.
I can’t believe I’m going to say this to you, Dave, because I’m an ex-copywriter, but…
Dave:
Well, just don’t say it. Whatever that is.
Darren:
No, I have to.
Dave:
Okay.
Darren:
Is it as easy with creative people? Because they’ve got a reputation for sometimes being a bit precious or a bit defensive.
Dave:
No, we’re not.
Darren:
That was the perfect answer by the way. But to make people work together like that?
Dave:
Do you know what, I think it’s a really good question. And as someone who’s spent a long time working in creative as you have, you would appreciate it’s always a bit of a sliding scale. There are some people who are real prima donnas, and others who are very collaborative and giving with their time and energy.
I think the industry these days has far more of the latter than the former. And I think it’s become really hard, actually, to be a prima donna these days in the business for every reason possible. I’ve found that the best creative people are definitely in that latter camp.
They’re generous both with other colleagues at the same level, and with juniors coming up and people that they’re able to mentor. So, I feel like as an industry, we’ve sort of extracted a lot of that sort of stuff.
Now, I think the downside of it sometimes is from some of those prima donnas came your characters and some of the breakout moments that made the industry probably either funny or dangerous, depending on what was happening at any point in time. But I think for the work, people who give away what they’ve got always makes the output better.
Someone who is generous of spirit and says, “Hey, I’ve had this idea, come in on and help make it better with me.” In its most natural and almost outdated format, it was a copywriter and an art director doing that.
I think it’s now spread out to be every specialist around you, from data, to media strategy, to production, to ‘insert other specialists here’ sort of writ large. It’s always gotten better, but I think that is almost a philosophical change in the industry where people have gone, “If I bring someone else in who’s really smart, this thing is going to get better, not worse.” So, I think hopefully that continues as a trend.
Darren:
So, would it be fair to say that often we are seeing the prima donnas go off and set up their own agencies?
Dave:
I don’t know if it’s that simple.
Darren:
I was just laying a trap there for you. And you’ve managed to walk…
Dave:
I’m not walking into that. As someone who’s also set up his own business previously, I’m also taking it personally at this point. So, message received.
Imogen:
Are you a prima donna, Dave? That is what we really want to get to the heart.
Dave:
I mean, maybe? To be honest, maybe.
Darren:
You do have to have a reasonably healthy ego, in the proper sense of the word, to actually put yourself out there day in, day out.
Dave:
I agree with that.
Darren:
With ideas that are going to be criticised…
Dave:
As a basic premise, you need to use to ‘no’.
My other half is a primary school teacher. She’s about as disinterested as in our industry as it’s possible to get. But one of her colleagues is doing AWARD school, as someone who knows no one in the industry.
And I know that she was just immediately hit by a tonne of bricks, like everyone is, when they enter the industry as a junior creative person trying to get started. Like, “Oh, my God, everything just dies.” It’s like, ‘No, no, no,’ about every idea.
But the end of that story is you come back next week, and then you go, “Okay.” And that continues your whole career. So, you get ‘no’ when you’re entering the industry, then you get ‘no’ showing your boss, then you get ‘no’ from the client.
Once your boss says, “That’s a great idea,”, then the client says ‘no’. Then you get ‘yes’ from a client, then ‘no’ from production. Then you get ‘yes’ from the client and production, then a ‘no’ from the consumer. And that keeps on going.
And I think the people who survive and thrive are the people who go, “Oh, okay. Well not no, I’m dead and I’ve got to leave the industry. No, there’s got to be something better here. There’s got to be that next answer that is actually genius and everyone’s going to love it. It’s going to work really well.”
I suppose these days you’d call it resilience, but for me the secret sauce has been curiosity and a kind of relentlessness. Going, “Oh, okay, well that’s gone now, but I’m not going to get emotionally tied to that.” Go back to the white piece of paper and try and put another thing on it and see where that leads.
So, to bring it back to prima donnas, I don’t know if that is fair. But I do think that people who go out and do their own thing, it is usually just them seeing if they can really. So, for me, it’s a test. That was certainly what it was for me.
But I’ve been very excited over the last year to come back into an environment that is, for starters, larger and with more depth across every sort of specialism. As a creative person, to be able to come in and architect different shapes across that in collaboration with these two and hundreds of others is a really exciting proposition.
For me, it reminds me of everything I loved about the industry when I went to tech world, and eventually it dragged me back. So, I think everyone needs confidence. I definitely think you need confidence, but I don’t think you need ego.
Darren:
I think you’re reacting to the modern interpretation of ego, which borders on arrogance. I think you need to be able to stand up to the criticism without it impacting your sense of self. That is having a healthy ego.
Dave:
Definitely agree with that premise.
Darren:
Let’s work with that ego.
Dave:
I’m going to go with that. I’ll have some of that ego, but not the arrogance version of it.
Imogen:
It might be worth mentioning that, in my own personal experience, I have worked with lots and lots of creative people over 25 years.
More often than not, if you are talking to someone about ways that you can help to make an idea better. Or if you can bring to the table some kind of data or evidence-based insight, that means they’re starting from a place where the idea is more likely to live rather than be told ‘no’.
If you’re genuinely interested and respectful about how they get their best work done, you don’t find yourself in an ego tussle. You find yourself more often than not working with people that are really driven to release great stuff into the world.
So, even in the very early days of my full-service career – I think I started in agencies in about 1998, ‘99, something like that…
Darren:
You know that’s last millennium.
Imogen:
Yes, thank you. I’m aware. It’s been a very long time.
Dave:
But only just.
Darren:
Only just. Like two years.
Imogen:
I really appreciate the emotional support.
Darren:
I used to say last century and then someone said, “No, no, it was last millennium.” And I went, “Oh my God.”
Imogen:
I mean, if anything has ever ruined my train of thought, that might be it. What was I talking about now?
Darren:
I’ll give you time to catch it again, because Maurice …
Maurice:
I was triggered too.
Darren:
On what you said before, it was interesting, because there really are two very distinct roles in your place. One is looking for insights and trends, the other is then supporting a particular recommendation with the data to support that.
Do you find yourself (or as a team, and I know you head up a massive team) do you find you spend more time with one or the other, and which is the one that is more valued by the business and more valued by clients?
Maurice:
No, it’s not one or the other. I think it’s so dependent, particularly in the landscape that we are in. Because part of my job is, you’re right, helping find those audience insights or that business insight that’s going to help power our idea. Going to help evolve it into something more.
But also, part of it is infrastructure. So, it is truly data and tech. Helping our clients, as we have over the past many years, to get ready for not only signal loss (because the cookie keeps threatening to go away and eventually it will)…
Darren:
Quite the crumble.
Maurice:
And not only the privacy legislation, but also consumers are demanding so much more when it comes to data privacy and transparency around how data is being used. So, it is helping our clients build that infrastructure and helping, internally, ourselves build the infrastructure.
It’s a lot of that and it’s a lot of finding the insights and creativity that helps and sparks ideas. So, I can’t say it’s one more than the other. It’s kind of equal.
Darren:
And what about the separation? Because what happened when media and creative split was that you would end up with strategists on both sides – connections or channel strategists and creative strategists. And often they were working in isolation, even though they’d say they wouldn’t, to bring it back together. Has this created a new platform where you actually are looking at both?
Maurice:
Well, I think that’s actually the exciting part of this Connected Platform. Because, going back to your comment around clients wanting one throat to choke, it’s not just that.
Like Zenith has their own IP. They have the Zenith Consumer Imagine Panel, a great data source where they’re talking to over 5,000 Australians each month to get a read. Spark has its centralised analytics suite, where it’s allowing us to do attribution and econometrics all in one platform.
Digitas has a great data science team doing predictive analytics. All these IP. What we’re working on is how is that IP interoperable and how it’s connecting. So yes, we can use the Zenith panel, but is it feeding into the Spark platform?
So, you still have the strategists working with their own IP, working with their own tools, but now we’re connected. Not only do we have great people who are working together, but we’re building this interoperable IP to help let a Saatchi strategist and a Spark strategist work alongside a Zenith strategist or a Digitas strategist.
Darren:
And on that basis, are you finding that there’s a more or less arguments and challenges? Because look, I want to put to the three of you a scenario that I personally have lived through and seen happen time and time again.
That is when it comes down to budget allocation, where are we going to invest the budget to achieve a client’s objective? And it’s always been there’s never enough money for the media, and there’s never enough money for the content to go into the media.
I think we all agree that both of them go hand-in-hand. You’ve got to get that balance right. What’s the approach here? Is it a data/insight strategy informed decision? Or do we still have people taking positions on this?
Maurice:
I mean, you’ve got to like the people you work with. And when you like the people you work with, you can have courageous conversations and challenging conversations. Imo and I have had courageous conversations with one another.
Imogen:
I love it. I love that definition. ‘Courageous conversation’.
Darren:
I’m thinking of, ‘Yes, Minister’. Saying, “That’s courageous, minister,” means don’t do it.
Maurice:
It’s that little, “Well, this is telling me this, and this is my instinct or my thought,” or “This is what I have”. You then get those tension points that helps you get to a good space and a good answer – that diversity of thought. “I haven’t thought of it that way, and you bring the evidence or the thought or the experience to convince me otherwise.” That’s how we get to great work.
Dave:
But I feel like in an environment where effectiveness and efficacy are more important than they have ever been before, and probably by a factor of about a hundred people, you need to make really responsible decisions. Because you don’t get to play next year if you get it wrong this year.
And I feel like one of the obvious, I suppose, outbreaks of the past (to take your prima donna of the past suggestion on) was definitely creative. There was always, “We need more money for production.”
Doesn’t matter what number we were given, 20 years ago that was always the thing. Like, “How do we build the film?”
Darren:
The next big idea.
Dave:
I feel like large parts of that struggle, though, are somewhat redundant or at least absent these days. Yes, you want, and you need, enough money to do something properly. And, certainly, at a scale and at an impact where it reflects well upon client, whatever you are building. But you need it to work. It needs to be a thing that’s going to hit market and be a growth driver, not just be a kind of flight of fancy.
Darren:
And, probably, my example there is very 20th century. Because actually the dispute now is which channels does the money have to go into? It’s not like the client’s budget has got exponentially bigger. They’ve got largely the same amount of money.
But now, and Imogen you mentioned it earlier, there are so many channels. And now we’ve got retail media, and it’s just eroding channel, so that you end up with a smaller amount of money. If you’re trying to be omni-channel in every channel, you end up putting chicken feed into everyone. How do you solve that problem?
Imogen:
So, there’s lots of really diligent and robust work that’s going on in lots of media agencies. I can certainly verify that for the ones that I’m involved in, that enables us to go into those conversations with a real view on predicting the outcome.
So, we have an understanding of what return on investment and efficacy look like by channel, by format. And we have that across pretty much every client that we work with. And we are, therefore, able to go into a situation where we think we can build a framework for how something should exist – the types of channels, the types of weights, the types of formats.
But you can’t be so rigid about that as to then have it prevent the delivery of a really excellent idea.
Darren:
It’s not a formula, is it?
Imogen:
It’s not a formula. It can’t be a formula. It’s never going to be a formula. There are some rules, of course, like don’t try and be in every single channel if you can’t be sufficiently present in all of them, because they won’t work. So, do fewer things and do them better, is the solution to that kind of conversation.
But we do go in with some very strong evidence around what we think is going to work. We sit and look at the sorts of ideas that are emerging. We think about how well that connects with an audience.
If there is a need to adjust, to have that idea live stronger and bolder in the world, then we adjust to make it live stronger and bolder in the world. The difference is that we are not all fighting for our share of the money. The money is in one big pot, so it doesn’t really matter to us too much.
Darren:
It lands in the same place.
Imogen:
There is an enormous amount of freedom that comes with that. Because I’ve run plenty of agencies where you are having a bit of an internal fight about whose best interest this is in. Is it in the best interest of the idea and, so, the service of the client objective? Or have I got to fight for my unfair share of the cash?
And if you can remove that from the equation, then you are in the pursuit of purely what is in the best interest of the client. How do we get the best things into market to deliver the best impact for them?
That’s actually pretty liberating, to be fair. And is there tension in it? Of course! You’ve got different people who are built differently, who think about things in different ways and who have different disciplines and strengths.
But if we’re only in the service of what’s the best outcome, then those tensions, those moments of ‘the rub’ as we call them, make it better rather than making it worse. So, I think that that’s an important factor in all of that.
Dave:
I think you’re also having those awkward, let’s call them ‘courageous conversations’ live. So, you’re not going, “We’re going to have one silo have that conversation with itself, and then the next silo will inherit whatever decisions were made.”
We’re actually having that in shaping out a brief and a process and going, “I know this seems like a good idea, but can we just change this inference? Because in two or three steps time, that’s going to come back in smashes.” And go, “Okay, let’s agree on whatever that kind of one source of truth is now.” I think you get better outcomes as a result.
Imogen:
Oh, totally. And you don’t have that meeting (that I think everyone has had) where you’ve got different disciplines in the room presenting completely different things that have never met one another before.
And you’re like, “Oh, I didn’t realise that we were going with a 90 second cinema ad, because I’ve only got six second bumpers on the plan.” You just never have that conversation ever again.
Dave:
What are the best six seconds of that 90?
Imogen:
Exactly. And “Oh, by the way, there isn’t enough money to run that ever. But yeah, it’s really nice. I liked it.” Preventing that conversation would be the ideal for clients, more so even than for agencies. Because yeah, that gets back to you.
Are you mediating, or are you moderating, or managing or whatever, the number of people in the room with different ideas?
Darren:
I ran a pitch in North America last year, and the client team had not met each other, let alone the agencies that were presenting to them. That’s how big it was, that they were introducing each other to each other.
They were like, “Oh, you work for us.” So, it happens and the bigger the client, the greater the challenge they have of pulling this together. So, you can see why that’s another reason why they would be looking for someone else to take on that coordination.
Dave, I want to focus a little bit on this issue of creative standards, because there’s a lot of criticism in some people’s minds that there seems to be less creativity, or less examples of creativity, in a world where we are churning so much content through these systems. Do you think that’s a fair criticism?
Dave:
I think if you look at the entire ecosystem, it would definitely be easy to feel like some elements of it have potentially slipped. But, equally, the bits that our parts of the industry are guiding and creating I think are getting more exciting, not less exciting.
I think part of the challenge has been around how fractured things have become. And I think you sort of hinted at it before, Imo, when you talked about trying to sprinkle things across a hundred channels. It, inevitably, in some cases weakens that creative story.
So, I think it is about being really focused about where you are operating and how you can sharpen that output as much as you can within those fields. And, on that level, I’m really optimistic about where we’re headed.
But I do think it is challenging if you look at things like personalisation at scale. And I think, in some cases, on a global level if you look at it that way, it’s allowed certain outbreaks of laziness. Because you go, “Oh, right, we’ll just fire it off into the ether.”
For me, the most effective work has always tried to go the opposite way and go, “What’s the clever way in which we can use that? The creative way in which we can use that, rather than the easy way.”
But I think, if you’re working with people who are sort of relentless, I feel like it’s really easy to try and maintain that standard. Because people will hold each other accountable. People will say, “Yeah, that’s okay, but what if we did this? What if we leveled it up?”
I definitely think most creative people in the industry operate that way anyway because, for better or worse, they’re shaped in that image of like, “Hmm, that’s okay. But how are we going to make it better?” I think we are now seeing that creative ethos appearing in all the businesses we work in.
I see that in data strategists. I see that in media strategists. I see people going, “Yeah, that’s okay. How do we make it better? How do we improve on that? How do we push it a bit further? How do we shrink the number of channels and allow us to be more expressive, or widen them and allow us to have more impact in that way?” Whatever it is. So, for me, I get really excited about that.
Darren:
Do you think the industry needs to change in the way it judges creative work? Because it still seems to have very much the focus on the big idea, which invariably is some sort of piece of film or TV. Then often what happens is campaigns can happen without a huge audience necessarily seeing them, because they’re very targeted in digital formats.
I’ve got a client that said to me, “I never see any of my ads.” And I said, “Well, just tell your media agency your IP address and they’ll make sure you see every one.”
Imogen:
Is that the modern-day version of the billboard outside the house?
Darren:
Literally, if you are really targeted, you’re not going to sell it to your own client.
Dave:
Well, I would say there’s a lot to unpack there. Because I do feel like, as an industry and if you look at award shows, there are a million of them. Everything from the ones that are more attractive to clients in the effectiveness space, to certainly lots that focus on creative and media and data. And there’s categories on categories, on categories.
So, there’s that side of it, which I’m not sure if we’ll solve that today. I do think in the past it’s probably guided a certain type of thinking that is valued more highly as an industry. I think the old-world version of the big idea used to be, “Can you write it on a page? Here’s what it was on a page.”
I don’t know if that captures the best type of thinking and creativity that we have in our industry these days. Sometimes it does. Sometimes there’s a, “What was it? I didn’t see that thing.” And you can explain it in a sentence, and everyone goes, “Oh, my God, that is amazing.” But often it’s more complex than that.
I think sometimes the most exciting things are really hard to put in a box. Having just judged media at D&AD a week and a half ago, some of the most exciting things that broke out there were like, “There should be a different category for this because it doesn’t fit in all the boxes that we have before us.”
So, I think that’s not necessarily a problem we’re going to solve on that level. But I think it’s the thing that makes the industry exciting. That there will be next week or tomorrow, hopefully this afternoon, someone will say something like, “Oh, what if we did this?”
And you’ll be like, “Oh my, I’ve never even thought about that as a way to execute this, for this challenge that we’ve got on our hands.” And the parallel shifts again. And then we’re like, “Oh, okay, well that’s the new benchmark.” I think that’s the exciting bit.
Darren:
In fact, what I’ve noticed, to your point about expressing the idea on a page, is increasingly it’s actually coming from the insights. That often the way an insight is expressed almost feels like a creative idea.
And some creative people feel that, in many ways, a strategist is laying down, “Here’s the creative insight. Your job is now to take that to the next step as a creative person.” Is that a fair…
Maurice:
One of the best compliments a creative ever gave to me when I gave them insights was like, “I feel like you just laid the idea at my feet.” That is what I strive to. You’re giving something inspiring to give them that “Aha!” moment of, “Oh, I never thought of it that way.”
By giving them something that they knew or instinctively felt but with data, you’ve turned it on its head a bit and you’ve given that sideways view to look at it.
And it’s not just about pulling the data. We spend as much time talking with our analysts and data scientists and data strategists to pull the data as we do crafting that data into an interesting story that an audience or your partners can receive.
It’s just not saying 55% of people did this thing, it’s about why did they do this thing? And what is the brand’s role to play in helping them do more of that, or helping assist their life.
Darren:
It would also help clients as well. Seeing data turned into an insight expressed that way, to then use that as the platform for judging the creative work as to whether it makes that insight more accessible, more engaging and more compelling. Because I think a lot of clients really do struggle still with judging a creative idea or expression, because the only thing they will default to is whether they like it or not.
Maurice:
Well, guess what, the industry has a solve for that. It’s called the Creative Data category at Cannes Lions. That category is about not just what the idea was, but how that insight sparked the idea. But, even more importantly, how that insight ended up at the business outcome.
Do we see a through line from where the insight started, who we said we were talking to, and why we were talking to them? Did we prove out that we actually reached them and changed their behaviour?
So, Creative Data at Cannes Lions as a great way to not just evaluate the idea, but start to understand how data was used to bring that idea to manifest.
Darren:
Absolutely. One of the things I’ve really enjoyed in this conversation is you haven’t stepped away from the fact that there is still tension, there’s still those moments – ‘the rub’. There’s still ‘the rub’, and it’s one of the things that I have conversations about a lot with clients.
They’ll come to us and say, “I think we need a new agency,” because the rub has become something either they’re stressed about or that they think is not a good thing. And I always use the metaphor that you only get pearls by putting grit into oysters, by irritating the shit out of an oyster you get a pearl.
Maurice:
Or diamonds under pressure.
Darren:
Or diamonds under pressure. These are good metaphors for the creative process. And what you’re saying here, what I’m hearing, is that while there are still three very clear disciplines and while sometimes there will be a rub, that it’s easier now to work through those issues.
Is that fair to say? One, because there’s not the money issue, which was always the unspoken tension, but also because is it easier to align to the ultimate objective here, which is to deliver the results for the client.
Imogen:
I think it’s both of those things. You can remove some of the structural challenges to good behaviour, which we’ve already talked about, and the singular P&L for the Groupe allows that to happen really easily.
The other part of this (which we haven’t necessarily touched on, but I personally think is quite important) is the more that you do it, the more you realise that being more multi-dimensional, more multi-discipline, having a breadth of understanding and a depth in your own discipline, the better it is for your career.
And it grows more interesting and interested people. They get better at how to handle those conversations where there is a bit of friction between different disciplines approaching things in different ways.
You get much, much better at solving those in the pursuit of the client’s end goal, because that is all you’re actually there to solve. And you’ve managed, over time, to develop more empathy and respect for the way that other people within the organisation need to work in order to get really good work done.
So, I think there’s a cultural aspect to that. There’s an organisational and structural aspect to that, and there’s a massive desire aspect to that. So, as I said earlier, there is very few instances where I have found that people are obstinate or difficult if they are very clear on the fact that we’re all in the business of making it better.
Darren:
Look, we’ve unfortunately run out of time. But thank you very much for your time, Maurice, Dave and Imogen. And look, I can’t do a podcast with an agency and agency senior people like this without asking, “Where’s AI going to take us?”
